Russia and Ukraine yesterday stepped up security around Crimea as tensions soared over accusations by Moscow that Kiev had attempted armed incursions into the disputed peninsula.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday said that it had thwarted “terrorist attacks” in Crimea this week by Ukrainian military intelligence and beaten back armed assaults, but Kiev fiercely denied the claims.
The allegations ratcheted up the heat in a feud sparked by Moscow’s 2014 seizure of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine and raised fears of possible wider conflict.
Photo: Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with security bosses to discuss “additional measures for ensuring security for citizens and essential infrastructure in Crimea,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
“Scenarios were carefully considered for anti-terrorist security measures at the land border, in the waters and in the airspace of Crimea,” it said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also met his own top brass and ordered forces along the frontier with Crimea and across the conflict-wracked east onto “high-alert level.”
The FSB said that one of its officers was killed in armed clashes while arresting “terrorists” overnight on Saturday to Sunday, while a Russian soldier died in a firefight with “sabotage-terrorist” groups sent by the Ukrainian military on Monday.
Putin accused Kiev of “practicing terror” and warned that the deaths of the two Russian officers would have consequences.
“We obviously will not let such things slide by,” Putin said. “This is a very dangerous game.”
Poroshenko hit back that Moscow’s claims were “senseless and cynical” and said the “fantasies are only another pretext for the next military threats toward Ukraine.”
Two residents living on the Russian-controlled side of the Crimea-Ukraine frontier said there has been an unexplained build-up of Russian military hardware in the area over the past few weeks.
Russia is holding nationwide legislative elections next month — including in Crimea — and the FSB said the alleged raids could be aimed at destabilizing the situation ahead of the vote.
A senior Ukrainian security official said that Moscow’s claims were a “crude Russian provocation” and that Kiev was “getting ready for anything,” including an invasion.
Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Volodymyr Yelchenko on Wednesday said that Kiev would ask the UN Security Council to hold an urgent meeting if tensions continue to rise.
Russia says it has detained several Ukrainian and Russian citizens over the incident, including an alleged Ukrainian military intelligence officer named Yevgen Panov.
Kiev has called Panov a “hostage.”
Moscow and Kiev have been locked in a bitter dispute since the Kremlin seized Crimea in March 2014 after Ukraine’s Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.
The latest war of words represents the most serious increase in tensions in months as a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine — that Kiev and the West blame on Moscow — drags on despite a stalled peace deal.
Putin said a mooted meeting with Poroshenko and mediators German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at next month’s G20 summit in China was now “senseless.”
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